


Sketches & Scalpels

by FictionPenned



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Monologue, Vignette, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22377496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: His voice fills her ears with sibilant whispers that slip between English and French and Italian and Lithuanian and the ghosts of his hands guide her own across cutting boards and harpsichord keys and both his skin and her own as they move as one in tandem and the taste of tainted beer as she ignorantly let it coat her palette and the echo of banging on the bedroom door as she realizes that there is glass frozen in the air around her and she is no longer standing on solid ground because the ghost of a girl who she had loved had pushed her –A series of short, stream-of-consciousness character sketches inspired by NBC Hannibal. Updated weekly.
Kudos: 1





	1. Alana Bloom

Fingers tighten their grip on the cool metal head of her cane with the same intensity with which they had once fastened around the rims of a wheelchair, the same intensity with which she will, eventually, squeeze the hands of her wife and child. The respite and shield provided by family life, however, has not yet graced her with its presence.

She is still only Doctor Alana Bloom:

psychologist,

professor,

fearful,

broken.

Not Doctor Alana Verger-Bloom:

mother, 

wife,

still broken,

but loved.

Standing in the dusty room that had once been Hannibal’s basement, such an evolution seems impossible. His voice fills her ears with sibilant whispers that slip between English and French and Italian and Lithuanian and the memory of his hands guide her own across cutting boards and harpsichord keys and both his skin and her own as they move as one in tandem and the taste of tainted beer as she ignorantly let it coat her palette and the echo of banging on the bedroom door as she realizes that there is glass frozen in the air around her and she is no longer standing on solid ground because the ghost of a girl who she had loved had pushed her –

She purses her lips and adjusts her grip, tapping the cane once against the floor as she steps forward in an attempt to break the thrall of the memories that threaten to tear her apart limb by limb. Her free hand reaches out – trailing against the edge of a saw as she wonders how it must feel to be murdered and eaten by a man you trusted. Wondering if dying might have been better than this alternative, this half life that kept her tethered to a world that she no longer feels a part of.

Her hand slips and a small cut opens across the pad of her finger. She does not gasp or cry out – in fact, she barely feels it. What is an ounce of pain among a sea of it? 

Nothing.

Just like she is nothing.

Dark-painted lips quirk with dark humor and she speaks to the emptiness, words muffled by soundproof walls.

“Perhaps we should get better acquainted.”

She is, of course, addressing the pain itself. Maybe she can weaponize her own pain, perhaps it will no longer be a weakness. If Hannibal can feel what she is feeling, she might manage to grasp some fleeting sense of satisfaction. She would have to speak to the right people, make allies in this war against a common energy as she moved with the same spurned grace as Artemis on her hunt for vengeance and the rapture that it might bring with it.

Not Frederick, god no —

But she had heard whispers of a bounty …


	2. Abigail Hobbs

_ Cannibals _ .

The accusation is scrawled across her home in dripping crimson. She takes a step forward, touching it with the very tips of her fingers, tilting her head as she wonders if the tableau is real or imagined. Paranoia has consumed her, and it is all too easy to lose track of where lies stop and truth begins, all too easy to commit herself to the fantasy of a life that she had always wanted and never had, all too easy to cling to innocence so tightly that she forgets the parade of young women that had passed through their doors, each one full of hopes and dreams that will never be fulfilled. 

Her fingers come away slick, sticky, and stinking of paint.   
  


It looks like blood.   
  


Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, breath catches in the back of her throat, and the world seems to spin around her -- brick and stone and pavement and forest and the unshakeable sense that she’s being watched and judged and that the wrong move will mean cold steel around her wrists and a cell without a window and being left alone with her guilt until it rots her away from the inside out.   
  
  
Dying in prison means a life gone.   
  
A body wasted.    
  
Nothing ventured and nothing gained aside from an insurmountable sense of  _ loss _ .

She leans against the door and doubles over. Stained fingertips dig into her knees and the letter I imprints itself onto the back of her jacket and she counts good memories until she no longer feels like the world is suffocating her.    
  
_ Cannibals. Cannibals. Cannibals. _

The word tastes bitter on the back of her tongue and burns on its way down. 

  
Humans.    
  
Less than humans.   
  
Her father had always said that they were more, better,  _ enlightened _ .   
  


**Her father had** **lied** .

Yet, she is trapped in a corner, forced to defend him in order to save her freedom and the promise of a brighter future. She hates it, hates lying, hates being cold and uncaring and clinging to reason in order to keep herself from drowning in her own guilt, but there’s nothing else to do. Not unless she wants to die, too, and she has so much more life to live. She had done what she had to do in order to survive, and she deserves to reap those rewards.   
  
... _Doesn’t she_?


	3. Freddie Lounds

She isn’t supposed to be this  _ weak _ .

She’s a  _ journalist _ .

Journalists are supposed to look on horrors with strength and an unbiased eye and relay it to the rest of the populous. Other people are the ones allowed to be affected by tragedy, moved to tears by a choice picture and well-woven words, but journalists are expected to remain aloof and distant.

But this is  **different** . It isn’t the first time that she had found herself staring down the elusive specter of death in the observatory, but it  **_IS_ ** the first time that she was unable to do anything to keep it at bay.

She had watched Dr. Abel Gideon cut open a stranger and practically turn him inside out and still kept her composure. Calm and detached and scientific to the very end, she kept both Frederick Chilton and herself  _ alive _ . But Beverly Katz is not quite a stranger. Freddie had held a certain degree of respect for the woman (because she respects every female with the gall to tell men what to do), and – upon her arrival – Bev had already been dead, dissected, sliced apart with disturbing and mechanical precision, insides left to be ravaged by prying eyes and gloved fingers.

She photographs the scene with the taste of bile in her mouth and shock evident on her face, but when she turns to leave she slips ...

... and falls partway down the spiral stairs.  
  
  


Good journalists aren’t supposed to fall .  
  
_Bloggers_ fall, and she has taken great care to brand herself as so much more.   
  
  


Her ankle is probably sprained, but she wasn’t about to admit to it. Instead she hugs the wall while she calls Jack Crawford – favoring the injured ankle all the while – and remains there until a member of the local police force asks to take her statement, at which point she takes up position against the hood of his car. It is a decent spot for observation. She can see people go in and out – friends, colleagues, officers – each entering with expressions of stubborn disbelief and emerging with tears and screams and devastatingly downturned mouths.

Under different circumstances, she might have snapped  a few pictures, spun on her heel, and strode away, ready to write and then publish.

But – this time – she  **_can’t_ ** .

At least, not  **EASILY** .

She will, of course, manage to do so later when the shock has waned. It is her duty to  serve her audience, and if she ever wishes to occupy a place in print rather than just a dusty corner of the internet, she will have to strengthen her stomach. It must be able to hold its own against her mind and her tongue . A task easier said than done, since both are quicker and sharper than they ought to be.   


One of these days, they might very well be her undoing. 


End file.
